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Ars Poetica – My Take on Poetry

“Ars Poetica” literally means “the art of (writing) poetry”. The way we express ourselves in our poetry varies from person to person. And the kind of poems we write depends upon our feelings. What most people do not know is that our poems are not always a product of our experience, it may just be our rendition of what we’ve seen, read or heard, or just our way of sublimating a part of us.

Poetry doesn’t have a reason for its creation. Either it happens, or it doesn’t. And what I have learnt the hard way is that – poetry takes time. You can’t force poetry. You can’t expect to produce an amazing piece by dedicating two fixed hours on your writing; your ideas cannot be fixed by time. So, in that reference, poetry is like wine, refining takes time.

When we are busy writing poems and publishing them we tend to confuse drafts with poems. We publish things we should’ve refined some more, or the ones that could’ve had a better ending to them. We start giving more importance to publishing something than to providing ample amount of criticism to our poems.

And along the way we forget the importance of simplicity. The simplest poems are the deepest. These poems leave a deep impression upon us, mostly because even though they are easy to understand, the meaning between the lines is what makes it even more attractive. With that note in mind, I would like to give the example of the poem –

We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks –

We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.

So, in conclusion, poetry is open to various interpretations, but it totally up to us how we want to present it. 🙂